Spent two hours in a mountaineering shop today learning the complex intricacies of how to assemble, load, compress, detach, re-attach, un-compress, adjust, re-load and climb into my new backpack. Yes - the time is getting closer now. I'm just glad I found the right one, though it seems apparent that you need to attend some sort of course to know how it all works! Lucky for me the guy in the shop had just attended one (I wasn't joking) and was more than happy to pack it with weights, flip it around and recite the terminology very enthusiastically.

Guess I'm gonna have to have a play with it until I'm familiar. Managed to get the right pack though, which is good considering I'll be living out of it / in it for some time.

Oh yeah, funny thing happened today - I bought some eggs. As hilarious as that might seem (!), what got me was the fact that these six little embryos are going to 'outlive' me. The best before date is 15th September. I'll be 7 days into my travels by the time they're inedible!!